It occurred to me today that life is often a winding road.

My son took his Segment 1 Driver’s Training classes in the Spring of 2019, fifteen months ago. Only today did he get his official Driver’s License from the Secretary of State. Between breaking his ankle last summer, and the winter months, and the complications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been hard for him to get to the place where he could make his way through the process.

As Garrett was in physical therapy last fall, for his ankle, he wasn’t able to log driving time (he’d broken his right ankle, of course) and driving time is required in order to become eligible for taking the Segment 2 course that comes next in the series. Once he cleared physical therapy, the weather (in December and January and February) wasn’t the kind that a nervous driver and his nervous parents are excited about driving around in.

Then, of course, the pandemic hit, and we were restricted to our homes for a short while. Even when that started to lift, our son was nervous about driving to log some hours when it was only supposed to be ‘necessary travel’.

But, as spring made its way toward summer, he started to want to resume his progress toward the goal, and the more he started driving, the more the hours started to accrue. Then, just as he was getting to the place where he had enough hours to be able to move on to the Segment 2 class, the driver’s training provider that we were using changed their plans, to be in compliance with state executive orders, and it became unlikely that we were going to be able to complete our son’s training through the same ‘school’ that he’d used to start the training.

But, because we understand that flexibility during adversity is one of the keys to eventual success, we looked for another place where he could get the Segment 2 training done. We found a place that would do the training, and Garrett took Segment 2, and he kept on logging driving hours.

To be eligible to take the road test, you must have fifty hours of driving experience, with ten of those hours happening at night.

As we got closer and closer to that number –fifty– I started to notice that the number of night hours wasn’t really going down at all. I knew, at that point, a couple of weeks ago, that my son and I were going to have to go on a few night-time driving trips, just to get some of those hours logged. So, we did, and I got to help him get comfortable about when to switch on your brights and when to be especially careful for deer on the move. This past weekend, as a matter of fact, my son logged his last necessary hours, which was great, since he had a scheduled appointment at the start of the week to take the road test.

Of course, the other thing that we were concerned about, in preparation for the road test, was parking practice. So, on a few occasions in the past month, my son and I have taken the family vehicle to a local parking lot, or two, to practice the big three –> pulling in, backing in, and… parallel parking.

As with many things about driving, you only get more comfortable with the finer points, once you’ve had enough practice. When I was a kid, I feel like they were giving out driver’s licenses like lollipops, compared to what kids have to go through these days. But, I’m also wondering whether or not my son is a better driver than I would have been at that same point in my development, almost thirty years ago.

* * *

I don’t know if you’ve recently tried getting an appointment at the Secretary of State’s office at any southwestern Michigan branch, but it’s not easy. We booked an appointment for our son, near the end of July, for the middle of September and thought we were pretty fortunate.

But, when Garrett passed his road test earlier this week, we knew that it was going to be torture for him to wait for a couple more weeks before being able to get in to complete the application process for his full driver’s license. My wife started looking for ‘standby’ spots at any of the local Secretary of State offices, and she ended up finding an appointment for much sooner.

That worked out well.

That appointment, as I said at the start of this post, was this afternoon. My son is able to drive a motor vehicle by himself. Look out, world.

* * *

I talked with him this afternoon, after he got back from his appointment, about taking steps into adulthood. Freedom becomes more real, and so does responsibility. I asked him what it was going to be like when he decided that he wanted to go for a drive by himself, and we discussed this notion that he is starting to develop into the man that is going to be able to successfully leave his mother and I, to go off into the world on his own.

As I sit here, typing these final thoughts at the end of this post, I have to say that I am getting nervous about the fact that he is at the point in life where he is starting to make a life that is, increasingly, his own. For all of the time that I’ve wasted, while he was in one room of the house doing his own thing, and I was in another room doing my own thing, I am starting to realize that my time with him is starting to wind down. I am ashamed of the time that I’ve been wasting, so many wasted moments.

They say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, because I am starting to realize what I am losing while I still have the chance to do something about it. While I will never get those lost moments back, I should start making the most of the time that I have remaining, with all three of my children, as my wife and I guide them the rest of the way to their futures.